Mark Steyn, the former GB News presenter, has taken Ofcom to court accusing it of “killing his career” after he questioned Covid vaccines on air, with the regulator saying his programmes caused “harm to viewers”. The Telegraph has more.
The presenter left GB News after the media regulator found two of his programmes, which featured discussions about the vaccine rollout, breached its guidelines.
Mr Steyn, 64, has asked a High Court judge to quash the decisions, claiming they had a “chilling effect”.
Speaking in court for Mr Steyn on June 10th, his lawyer Jonathan Price said: “The rulings against his show have killed his career, killed his career in the U.K. and given rise to what he describes as crude defamation… recycled through the London papers as if they had the force of criminal convictions.”
Canadian presenter Mr. Steyn joined GB News in 2021 but left in 2023, claiming that it wanted him to pay fines to Ofcom after the rulings against him.
Ofcom had found that on April 21st 2022 statistics from the U.K. Health Security Agency were presented in a “materially misleading way” in a broadcast which received four complaints.
It ruled that the show incorrectly “provided definitive evidence of a causal link between receiving a third COVID-19 vaccine and higher infection, hospitalisation and death rates”.
The presentation was made without sufficient counterweight and was found to be a potential “harm to viewers”.
Ofcom also took issue with a broadcast on Oct 4th 2022, when Mr. Steyn interviewed U.S. author Naomi Wolf during a show which received more than 400 complaints from viewers.
Ms. Wolf claimed that the vaccine rollout was akin to “mass murder”, and comparable to the actions of “doctors in pre-Nazi Germany”.
Ofcom ruled this amounted to “an unchallenged conspiracy theory”, and Ms. Wolf’s unopposed claims were a “harm to viewers”.
Worth reading in full.
Kathy Gyngell has written a fulsome defence of Steyn over on TCW Defending Freedom, calling him “the finest, the most talented and acute of journalists and broadcasters to have graced our TV screens in recent years”. On Covid vaccine harms he was the “only broadcaster doing his job”.
Vindication if anymore were needed came just weeks after the ruling. Evidence after evidence has since continued to emerge of Covid vaccines’ harms. Senior figures have joined Professor Dalgleish’s call for all mRNA vaccines to be banned, such are the risks. The ONS has been found to have lied about its vaccines safety and efficacy claims.
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Has been said over and over but nothing is truer than no farmers no food. This demolishes everything else and only a fool would deny it. Although you could argue that they want a no food situation so this is just music to their ears. But this would be based on a misunderstanding of the dynamics of the situation that would ensue.
No politicians – no stupidity
Yes there are many stupid prats in every walk of life but it is a different matter when they spend their energy trying to control and destroy us.
Chicken and egg? Which stupidity comes first, the electorate’s or the politicians’?
You mean no farmers in the UK & EU, but still plenty in the rest of the World? That doesn’t mean no food because there is that big wide World out there full of farmers eager to supply.
This is precisely what the French farmers are bellyaching about – there is plenty of food which consumers can get elsewhere at a better price.
That’s not an argument for the destruction of farming in Europe – but it is the reality. And the French farmers’ plight is of their own making, demanding protectionism for decades, and so isolated from the rigours of outside competition, they have become high-priced, uncompetitive – just like all of the EU’s and UK’s economic activity thanks to a protectionist Customs Union, which rather than the current bunch of ruling nitwits trying to get the UK more distanced, are determined to entangle us in it again.
I’ve got to hand it to les frogs, they don’t half know how to stage a good protest.
The French are great sailors too… Got to hand it to them.
Shame no one really likes them!
Well done to the French Farmers!
But I am quite worried about our own Farmers Protest in London tomorrow. Getting around London was a nightmare years ago, and must be even worse now. I hope the farmers know what they are getting themselves and their little ones into, by letting their kids lead the march with toy tractors. Where are they all going to stay, where are they all going to eat, and where are the kids going to rest when they get tired of all the long speeches and endless traffic noise of London?
I wish they had staged their protests all over the country in their own local towns and villages, inviting local reporters and dignitaries, and allowing millions more supporters to join in who can’t possibly get to London.
Maybe they can have nationwide local protests later on, then the National Farmers Union can collate all the data onto a map of Britain, including estimated numbers of farmers and their families and supporters all over the country, easily numbering in their millions, to issue as an International Press Release.
This is a polite warning to the Govt to rethink the policy. If they ignore the protest then it will escalate and spread all over as so many people will be losing their jobs and struggling to survive.
The dam is near breaking point and I have never heard people so angry about our 2 tier Country.
I wouldn’t worry about Farmers and their children, they are made of tough stuff, the same stuff Britains used to be made of, their kids get to get dirty, mix with large animals and associated droppings, and feed. Farmers won’t like being in the city its an anathema to them, and my guess is most Londoners will view tractors and large jumper coated burly men as a wonder to behold, like the first Elephants.
I think they need to follow the example of the truck drivers who blockaded the refineries. Starmer needs to learn and learn quick that Food security is incredibly important to the people of this country. He can eat all the imported Caviar and fake meat he likes, the majority of us want real meat, and vegetables produced in the UK
Protectionism of market sectors is paid for by consumers in higher prices because of the limited choice competition provides.
Protectionism often involves subsidies which are paid for by taxpayers who are consumers too.
Goods in a protectionist Customs Union – which the EU is – means people pay twice, once at the point of sale, then again (unseen) via the tax system.
The EU has protected farmers since 1958. A good part of this is via regulation intended to make it difficult/impossible for farmers outside the EU (and some inside) to compete because of the resources needed and cost to implement these regulations.
Farmers in the EU get help – subsidies – to implement the regulation and also can pass on increased costs to consumers in the absence of competition.
Brexit was supposed to relieve British farmers of these regulations, so they could be competitive against imported foods and also respond to market pressure for lower food prices, and still make a decent profit.
(Consumers dictate prices, not supermarkets.)
Of course this didn’t happen and British farmers still have the cost of unnecessary regulation and a market more open to lower priced imports.
I have every sympathy with British farmers who were the most efficient in Europe until dragged into the CAP when UK joined the EEC, making them increasingly equally inefficient with French and other EEC/EU farmers and uncompetitive in the global market place.
I have zero sympathy for EU farmers who have hidden behind protectionism – demanded it – at the expense of consumers, harming the poorest most for whom food takes up a higher proportion of income.
If you believe “regulations” are there for consumer safety and animal welfare, I have three words for you to consider… safe and effective. And put that mask back on! Poor granny.